


Nothing to see here

by belmanoir



Category: Kyle XY
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-01
Updated: 2012-04-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Foss runs errands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing to see here

**Author's Note:**

> For blackcurrant, who likes extraordinary people doing ordinary things. Beta'd by Sonia.

_1000 hours, the warehouse._

There's a bloodstain on Tom's shirt.

It's Kyle's birthday. Scratch that. It's the anniversary of the day Kyle got dragged out of the pod and terminated and Tom gave him CPR in the rain and shot Kern. For the ten years before that, Tom always thought of Kyle's birthday as the day he was put in the pod, the date recorded neatly at the top of his Zzyzx file. But Kyle chooses to celebrate this day instead.

Of course, when Sara was born, Erica held Tom's hand for thirteen hours straight, so tightly he had bruises. She yelled and cursed and sweated and made these little moans of pain that scared him right to his bones. There were fluids and blood, and gleaming equipment as arcane as anything in Zzyzx's labs. Maybe birthdays are always a memory of blind terror and ecstatic relief.

Tom's supposed to be meeting the Tragers for dinner at some Italian restaurant near Lake Union. He's been there before--big portions and a self-consciously kitschy decor. Post-ironic, Lori would call it. It annoys Tom that he knows that.

He's supposed to be meeting the Tragers for dinner, and his only nice shirt has a bloodstain on it. Just a little one on the edge of the cuff--he must have missed it when he cleaned the shirt. He can't even remember whose blood it is or why. Now that it's been through the wash, the chances of getting the stain out are almost nil. He spends ten minutes at the sink anyway, rubbing detergent into it until his hands are frozen and pruny. His skin will be dry and itchy later, and the stain is still there. No way in hell is he going to Kyle's birthday dinner with blood on his cuff. He's going to have to buy a new shirt.

 

_1100 hours, Target._

He just wants a plain shirt. Why does everything have lavender pinstripes? After half an hour of going through every rack in the men's section, he still only has about six shirts folded precariously over his arm. 

He hates department-store changing rooms. Probably most people do. But besides all the usual reasons, he hates that he can't see out, and that there's a foot and a half of space between the walls and the floor. At the moment, no one's trying to kill him that he knows of. But if they were, this would be their chance.

The shirts gleam white in the fluorescent light. He hates new clothes, too. They don't look quite natural. They draw attention. The eye doesn't pass smoothly over them, like it does over a plain, middle-aged guy in an old jacket. 

He finally settles for light blue. If he washes it before he wears it, it might almost pass.

 

_1230 hours, the laundromat._

Tom likes laundromats. Loud white noise makes him nervous, it's true, but if he chooses his chair carefully he's still difficult to sneak up on. Besides, it's a laundromat. He's sure there's a clever action movie somewhere that would disagree, but nothing exciting ever happens in laundromats. He's stuck there--if he leaves, someone will steal his clothes--so he can just sit in his plastic chair and read a paperback mystery without feeling like he should be doing something.

He sizes up the other patrons automatically. Not many, early Tuesday afternoon: a hippie mother with a hamper of cloth diapers, a tall Asian boy in grass-stained cargo shorts and his girlfriend's t-shirt, and an old man reading _Martha Stewart Living._

Tom upends his laundry bag into the machine. The bag is one of the few constants in his life. He's been using the same blue cotton drawstring since the dorms at Illinois State. Back then, he thought there was a washer-and-dryer-equipped suburban family home in his future. On the list of things he wanted and didn't get, that one's towards the bottom.

The chairs are lined up with their backs to the huge plate glass window and the parking lot. He moves one over to in front of his washing machine and settles in. Setting his phone to vibrate in case Kyle or Jessi calls, he pulls _Somebody's Always Walking Over My Grave_ out of his jacket pocket and starts to read.

 

_1400 hours, Tower Records._

"He likes piano music," he tells the lady behind the counter. "Do you have anything experimental? I want something he won't already have."

She points him at a CD and he buys it. He has no idea if Kyle will like it or not, but it doesn't matter. This isn't Kyle's present. Or at least, it's the normal part, the part that doesn't mean anything, just proves he went to a store and bought something.

If he's honest, he'll admit he likes the idea of Kyle having something from Tom that he can show other people. He's not honest, and that's too dumb to admit.

 

_1600 hours, Baylin's house._

Tom's seen the way Kyle and Jessi pass that photo of Baylin and Sarah back and forth. It's starting to get crinkled around the edges, but the reverence in their hands doesn't change. They still wear the Latnok rings, even after Latnok tried to kill them.

Tom doesn't have any heirlooms for them beyond Baylin's notebooks and files. Kyle had to burn most of those, to keep Latnok from getting their hands on them. But there's got to be something at the house. The place belongs to Latnok now, but Tom's recon suggests they aren't using it for much. 

Sure enough, when he gets there, the house is deserted. There are bound to be cameras, but he's wearing a mask. He doubts they'll do much more than gossip even if they recognize him. This time he isn't after their secrets.

Latnok's changed all the security, taken down his carefully constructed defenses and installed new ones. Probably they were trying to keep Tom out, but the sad truth is it would have been harder for Tom to get past his own system. He's a little disappointed. Let's face it, he feels more at home with the edge of fear than with the comfortable buzzing of a dryer against his back. Fear is something he knows, knows like he used to know the contours of Kyle's face inside stainless steel and glass and that weird pink light. 

The house is almost exactly as Baylin left it. Tom wanders through the rooms. It's funny, when he looks at everything, how little most of it would mean to Kyle. Tom has ten years of memories of Baylin in this house. Kyle was only here a few months, and he didn't take anything with him when he left. At the time Tom put it down to grief, but maybe this was a stupid idea. Maybe there's nothing here for either of them. Even Baylin never cared about most of this crap.

He ends up in the conservatory without meaning to, looking out that window. Kyle and Baylin used to stand here for hours, staring at that glass of water like it held the secrets of the universe. If it did, they're gone now. He _told_ Baylin not to spend so much time near the windows. Baylin never took him seriously.

In the end, Tom takes a plant. Something small and showy with orange flowers that looks like it should grow in the desert. He thinks Kyle will like it.

 

_1800 hours, the Seattle Public Library._

Driving back to the warehouse would take an extra forty minutes and make him late for dinner. He thought this might happen, though, so he brought his clothes with him. He stops at the library and changes in the restroom's handicapped stall. Khakis, a clean undershirt, new button-down, nice shoes. Back at the sink, he wets his comb and runs it through his hair. Damn. He forgot something.

 

_1825 hours, Bartell's drugstore._

He rips the disposable razor out of its packaging and perches it on the edge of the restroom sink, next to the small bottle of cheap aftershave. The soap in the dispenser is the foamy kind, which isn't as good for shaving as you'd think, but Tom makes do. He even manages not to splash his shirt. 

Putting the plastic safety cap back on the razor, he drops it into the inner pocket of his peacoat, just in case he needs it for anything. 

There, almost respectable.


End file.
